Paramount Boss Confirms That Yes, David Fincher Is Directing the ‘World War Z’-quel

After months stretching into years of personnel changes, rewrites, unceremonious departures, rumors, hearsay, and scuttlebutt, World War Z’s long-delayed sequel may finally be good to go. Paramount’s been on the hunt for a director for some time now after the original film’s helmer Marc Forster chucked up the proverbial deuce back in 2013. Industry types have bandied about David Fincher’s name as the most probable replacement, and a big lead feature about newly crowned Paramount head Jim Gianopulos in The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that Fincher’s in, this is real, and it’s all happening. In the parlance of Entourage, “David Fincher’s doing the movie!”

After all this murmuring, speculation, and theory-mongering, it’s faintly humorous how matter-of-fact Gianopulos’ confirmation was. Here’s the direct quote from the THR piece:

What’s the status of the World War Z sequel?

We're in advanced development.

With David Fincher directing?

Yes. And Brad Pitt.

“Yes.” A year’s worth of tentatively-asked questions at press junkets, shaky scoops from unnamed sources, and feverish message board discussion, and it’s all settled with “yes.”

That being said, Fincher’s kind of perfect for this project. Here’s a good rule of thumb: The best David Fincher movies are the ones that seem like a waste of his talent. In the past decade, he has elevated lowbrow airport literature and pop-history of the modern era to the realm of high genre art. Who’s to say he can’t do the same with a bland blockbuster from the earlier half of this decade? Fincher’s a cinematic Rumpelstiltskin, spinning the flax of low-quality intellectual property into the gold of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Gone Girl, and now World War Z2: The Z-Quel. (Working title.)